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1. Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Mar-2023 15:21:10 UTC Robert McNees

   Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" was published #OTD in 1988.

   I read it a few months after it came out, excitedly underlining and starring passages, dog-earing the pages that wowed me.

   All summer I dreamt of big bangs and black holes.

   https://www.hawking.org.uk/in-print/books/a-brief-history-of-time?position=13

   • Rog (rog@mastodon.radio)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Mar-2023 15:47:44 UTC Rog

     in reply to

     @mcnees

     I always wondered, he said that a black hole could emit as Hawking Radiation, a functional TV... So, and I admit this is a bit silly, but couldn't it also emit a (new) person/probe that had the memories of attempting to do some interdimensional travel, or timetravel? And if it could, is there any way to tell the difference between a spontaneously created person, and someone who actually did some travelling, and/or does it matter? I realise this is in the realms of speculative sci-fi...

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Mar-2023 15:47:44 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     • Rog

     @Rog If the emissions were truly thermal, then sure it's possible, but so vanishingly unlikely that it's never going to happen. However, this probably doesn't matter, because what we think now is that the emissions *are not* thermal. They still encode information about what the black hole swallowed.